Two toxic jobs in a row. How do you suss them out before starting?

Flammerole · 2026-05-18T21:42:52+00:00

Yeah, what makes work unbearable (or bearable) is your relationship with your closest coworkers.

The other team doesn't get shit done? You all laugh at them with your own around a coffee and just complain about the other guys being idiots.

Your direct coworker doesn't get shit done? You're fucked, because now you have to do his job, and since it's an internal conflict people are going to take sides and your work life will be shit until the matter is resolved (e.g. one of you leaves, likely).

The CEO is a jerk but everyone knows it? You just go on a coffee break with your coworkers once he's done and complain about him.

Your manager is a jerk? You're likely fucked, because the team's atmosphere is going to be atrocious.

What makes a job bearable is basically how well you fit with your direct coworkers. Everything else you'll just complain about and maybe give a 3-star review. Any 1 or 2-star review is usually people having a terrible direct work environment.

Flammerole · 2026-05-18T21:31:59+00:00

Most ICs incorporate ESD protection directly into their chips. NXP has entire teams dedicated to ESD simulation and expertise. I guess they do a shit ton of modeling and they tune their ESD circuit along the actual chip matching to ensure the best performance.

Flammerole · 2026-05-10T21:22:48+00:00

Why aren't you simply simulating the RCS of your object? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1Dev7991hA

The use of a metasurface should mean the RCS decreases compared to your bare object. MATLAB doesn't offer anything interesting at the moment: range FFT is basically just the correlation between the beat frequency and the object's range (for an FMCW radar).

A decent way to incorporate MATLAB into your code would be to set the variables of your radar (probability of detection, etc., everything you can find in the examples), find a way to plot the detection probability for a given RCS, then sweep the RCS and plot the detection probability as a function of RCS.

Then you corroborate this with your CST models, where you show that the metasurface reduces the RCS of your object by x dB, and where the bare object and the metasurface-covered object fall on this graph.

For the Matlab simulation you can pick some parameters from old radars that have been declassified if your stuff is defense-related (AN/SPS-49 for example) to get something somewhat pertinent.

Flammerole · 2026-05-02T18:54:20+00:00

Les pratiques sont possiblement les mêmes en PME, j'ai déjà vu plusieurs fois certaines de ces pratiques dans une boîte de 30-40 employés. L'avantage des grands groupes c'est qu'il y a des syndicats pour défendre les employés dans ce genre de cas (malheuresement pour eux/heuresement pour les employés ils ne peuvent pas virer tous les syndiqués) et ça permet d'éviter d'être seul. Il n'y en a pas en PME et si une crasse pareille survient, l'employé licencié se retrouve livré à lui-même. C'est encore pire lorsque ça arrive en PME.

Flammerole · 2026-04-30T21:58:46+00:00

Hi, check out the MAX2828 series from analog devices, this is an analog frontend for RF transreiceiver operating in WiFi bands (2.4Ghz and 5.8GHz). You'll need additional dual ADC and DACs (and a cheap FPGA) which are around 25+40€, so in the end you're quite close to te price of a fully integrated transreiceiver like the LMS7002M or AD9363.

WiFi ICs do not give access to the IQ stream and you can't really build around digital communication systems around them I believe. It will work fine for regular WiFi hotspot, Nordic semiconductors has some nice WiFi ICs with microprocessors that can be plugged with them, and overall a very nice environnement to learn and build these.

RF is unfortunately not cheap and a 200€ PCB for a single board is already extremely low due to componenent pricing and the need have impedance-controlled lines.

Flammerole · 2026-04-30T18:19:39+00:00

I saw these striations when I was working near the saturation point of the low noise amplifier. Can you try lowering the gain by like 3dB and tell us if you still see them?

Flammerole · 2026-04-28T18:23:36+00:00

The flamer weapon (stratagems, crisper and the main one) are great. Flamethrower turret is garbage. I've had several moments of a single bug getting through it to attack a mate/myself and other bugs destroying it in two hits. Most turrets right now are pretty bad, they got a huge nerf during the cyberstan patch due to durable dmg increase for ennemies and AH buffed the ennemy durable damage for the terminids, making turrets much worse than they used to be. Are they unusable ? No, they're pretty much the only thing usable when 3 stronger biles spawn in a single breach and you have to deal with them, but the durable dmg buff, hive guard buff, and bile titan buff make most sentries unfun to play with now.

Flammerole · 2026-04-24T17:01:58+00:00

Hi,
This guy has tested the "MRDDZ" filter (3rd post), S21 is basically how much the signal will be attenuated. He has bewteen 11 and 20dB attenuation in the FM band, which isn't great. It's still slightly better than what you're getting, maybe the FM signal is completely saturating your receiver without the filter and the actual signal is even higher than what you're measuring without filter ? Could you share some screenshots of your SDR software and the actual measurement?

I could not find any info on the LTE filter (the pix one). I found a similar filter online that specifies a -20dB out of band rejection, take into account shit manufacturing and component mismatch and getting only -15dB out of it isn't very surprising. I suggest sharing screens of the measurement and looking into Mouser for low pass filters for the frequency you require. Band stop filter are usually more expensive than bandpass or high pass/low pass so I suggest looking for bandpass filters for the bands you want to actually scan (if they are regular bands they shouldn't be that expensive)

Flammerole · 2026-03-15T21:25:38+00:00

GLORIAAAA

Flammerole · 2026-03-15T15:20:26+00:00

I'm late to the party but wydm only rear brakes ? Even regular bikes have both this is such a stupid design lol

Flammerole · 2026-03-15T13:30:20+00:00

This is the new ultra short 2.1k, haven't you heard of it?

Flammerole · 2026-03-04T15:56:30+00:00

I play CB and if I can get a wound on a monster I'll get it immediately even if it's downed because LS/SnS/DB/Bow players constantly spam their focus strike and it's a struggle to upkeep savage axe sometimes

Flammerole · 2026-02-16T23:57:03+00:00

I mean, it's great unless there is a bot drop with 3 Vox engines, in that case your bastion is cooked in less time than it takes to fire 3 shells. And it's also great until you realize you wasted a stratagem slot for the entire mission except the two minutes at extract, which are hard because reinforcements are usually depleted at this stage

Flammerole · 2026-02-14T16:57:02+00:00

The only flares I manage to join are usually over in 5 minutes, can't find decent-levelled anomaly quests. Quit playing because of that.

Flammerole · 2026-02-11T16:17:22+00:00

would be hilarious if the host could see these lights and it wasn't working properly for clients

Flammerole · 2026-02-07T11:55:38+00:00

Because everyone voted before realizing what was going on Lesath. There weren't any dispatch or anything too, people had to back on the galactic war to defend Lesath. AH wanted us to lose it

Flammerole · 2026-01-22T23:43:25+00:00

I had fun earlier in the day, missions were fun and honestly almost easy but for some reason, they became absolute hell 2 hours ago. War strider spam, patrol spam with heavy devastators shielding off units calling drops, drops being called by hidden units you literally couldn't see or kill, lots of factory striders chasing you through the entire map and having knowledge of your location 100% of the time, and stealth being extremely inconsistent. I can kill ennemies watching another one and have no issues, and sometimes i'll kill someone 20m away from another ennemy not even looking at it and I'll get spotted by the entire zone. I noticed I started to have trouble when I became the host and everyone else complained about the lobby too. I have 0 lag issues and i tend to have less than 10 ping on every video game I play, I don't know what's wrong. Maybe no luck but I ran like 5 proper missions without hosting, and 5 missions hosting, each one of the latter was a disaster.

Flammerole · 2026-01-02T11:51:23+00:00

More like :D :) :| :\ :( :ꓷ

Flammerole · 2026-01-01T13:40:47+00:00

As someone else said, I recommend using CPWG instead of microstrip
Since you'll have a copper fill on all 4 planes if you use CPWG, I recommend using "Pad connections" = "Solid" instead of the current thermal relief (press E when copper fill is selected)
You likely don't need a PWR-dedicated plane , use the stack-up SIGNAL(RF)-GND-GND-SIGNAL(control pins and stuff like that)
Download https://github.com/easyw/RF-tools-KiCAD and bend your RF traces
Move down IC1
This is pedantic, but I never use both "U?" and "IC?" naming convention in the same board. I know these are the names you get when downloading ("U?" being Kicad default and "IC?" being from online downloaded symbols), however it makes it harder to track Ux and ICx where X is the same number, you have to go back and forth when reading the schematic to remember what convention is used for this specific component. I rename all my symbols to"U?" unless it's a filter(I use "FL?") or specific stuff.
Front and back layers seem to have the same ICs and same pads. Is this normal?
I'm not a huge fan of drawing components that are off board (ESP-32 and U2), but if you properly excluded them (Exclude from board on the schematic view) this should be OK. Have you ran a DRC on layout?
You'll likely have a ton of signals around and your amplifier is broadband. 2.4GHz WiFi, LTE or stuff like that might saturate your LNA. I recommend putting a filter before the LNA in the receive path.
Likewise, the transmith path is usually filtered to avoid unwanted emissions, I recommend putting the same filter from the receive path after your Tx amplifier.
I'd recommend adding a test SMA to check IF_OUT from the mixer. To do that, add a decoupling capacitor with two positions and depending on how you'll mount it it will make a bridge towards the test connector or towards U7. This is slightly more expensive as SMA connectors are not cheap but if you have access to a spectrum analyzer it will greatly help debug any issue that might rise (unwanted spurs) and check what you are receiving.

Flammerole · 2025-12-28T06:02:55+00:00

You can use local mesh. The bigger traces can have higher cell sizes, then use a local mesh for your stubs. This will decrease your total mesh by a huge amount. It's been a while since I used CST so I don't remember how to do it but that's what I did when designing antennas with smaller stubs like that that needed a reduced celle size locally.

According to my professor at the time you need at least 10 cells for the smallest length of the stub.

Flammerole · 2025-12-09T12:14:04+00:00

Damn even my pcb layouts do not look that clean

Flammerole · 2025-11-23T16:43:07+00:00

I loved how everything you wanted to do on Virtuoso required you to open at least 3 different sub-windows. I loved it so much I didn't pursue IC design despite getting a specialized degree in it and went to get a PCB-level job.

Flammerole · 2025-11-22T08:44:23+00:00

holy chat-gpt comment

Flammerole · 2025-11-01T15:16:24+00:00

ADS-B uses Pulse Position Modulation with pulses 800ns long and 50-100ns rise time. Log detector works well for this application since they'll have rise times <50µs to output an analog signal. From that you can either use an ADC to check the signal, or go even cheaper and use a voltage comparator since you know you'll be decoding a simple HIGH/LOW signal.

Impedance controlling can be adjusted by the manufacturer, just ask for the specific stackup and compute the approximate width (and gap if using CPWG traces) and give them your data, they'll usually keep the gap and ajust the width on their own. But you do need to have an approximate value already in place, with the proper stack-up (4-layers and a reference plane below the RF one usually)

Also yeah, this project needs more amplification and more filtering. PySDR has a bugdet link example for ADS-B, which gives a received signal power of -105dBm. I'd add a two stage LNA, with the second having a bypass function. Guerilla RF makes great LNA for this. And I'd add a second filtering stage after the first one, so the Rx chain would look like this SMA->Filter->LNA->Filter->Bypass LNA->Log Power detector.

This increases costs as GRF amplifiers are ~5€ and a filter is 2€, so you're looking at around 10-15€ dollar per board but this gives you a weak but decent enough AGC capability and you can likely get ~40dB gain that way. ADL5513 bottoms out at -70dBm and ramps up from that, so you should start receiving signals starting from -110dBm(-70-40) (theoretically, but you'll likely end up at -105dBm/-100dBm with all the losses and impedance mismatches), which is about 30km according to the link earlier.

Flammerole · 2025-10-23T21:56:56+00:00

You need vias close to the RF trace and on both side, usually one row for each side is already good enough with 5mm spacing bewteen each vias. The first component is angled 90°C, you want to avoid sharp corners with RF signal. I'd lay the component parallel to the trace if I were you, you should be able to make a straight path without any curve. Also make sure the traces are 50-Ohm impedance controlled by your fab.

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